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Lightweight, Miniature Inertial Measurement System

Saturday, 01 September 2012

accurate inertial navigation system
(INS) is coupled with GPS receivers to
provide stable and highly accurate positioning,
attitude, and inertial measurements
while being subjected to highly
dynamic maneuvers. In contrast to conventional
methods that use extensive,
ground-based, real-time tracking and
control units that are expensive, large,
and require excessive amounts of power
to operate, this method focuses on the
development of an estimator that makes
use of a low-cost, miniature accelerometer
array fused with traditional measurement
systems and GPS. Through the use
of a position tracking estimation algorithm,
onboard accelerometers are
numerically integrated and transformed
using attitude information to obtain an
estimate of position in the inertial
frame. Position and velocity estimates
are subject to drift due to accelerometer
sensor bias and high vibration over time,
and so require the integration with GPS
information using a Kalman filter to provide
highly accurate and reliable inertial
tracking estimations.

The method implemented here uses
the local gravitational field vector. Upon
determining the location of the local
gravitational field vector relative to two
consecutive sensors, the orientation of
the device may then be estimated, and
the attitude determined. Improved attitude
estimates further enhance the inertial
position estimates. The device can
be powered either by batteries, or by the
power source onboard its target platforms.
A DB9 port provides the I/O to
external systems, and the device is
designed to be mounted in a waterproof
case for all-weather conditions.

This work was done by Liang Tang of
Impact Technologies and Agamemnon
Crassidis of the Rochester Institute of
Technology for Goddard Space Flight Center. GSC-16132-1

This Brief includes a Technical Support Package (TSP).

Lightweight, Miniature Inertial Measurement System (reference GSC-16132-1) is currently available for download from the TSP library.

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